What is anger? In my younger days I would have told you anger is a force of destruction used to justify the worst in all of us; I would have told you anger is a means by which otherwise good people are capable of terrible things; I would have told you anger is to be avoided for it does brings naught but harm. Having spent a great deal of time trying to understand the past, my past as well as my country’s past, I have tried to gain a greater understanding of anger. I now understand anger to be a fundamental part of the human experience. Anger is an actionable emotion or force, it drives us, compels us, to act. What is this action? Protection. Anger, even right down to the base fight-or-flight responses, brings forth the energy and drive, the will and focus, to protect.
We become angered, and then wish to protect, frequently as everyday Americans in our everyday lives. If your face is struck, you get angry and act in order to protect your face. If you are insulted, you get angry and act in order to protect your ego. People, in angered states, act to protect all sorts of things: lifestyles, countries, families, ideals, records, myths and legends, and more. Anger, being a potentially explosive actionable emotion has the potential to be a tool for constructive change or terrible regret. Unfortunately, I live in a time and place wherein anger has been wielded more as a weapon of fear and oppression than for anything inspiring joy or peace.
I live in a time and place wherein there are powers-that-be who have figured out anger is an infinite wealth generating device from those who tend to be: small-minded, closed-minded, and malleable. Entire (mega) churches, 24/7 media networks, political networks, advertising campaigns, and social media operations have been designed to manipulate you into doing their bidding. A primary tool which makes the aforementioned so successful is the anger of the audience. I would like to remind you at this point, dear reader, most people on an individual level are actually pretty cool. Most people have positives to bring to the table. People aren’t born evil, they’re taught evil by others. This learned evil, this cyclical evil does make people do and believe in terrible things. However, some of it stems from that anger-protection relationship, many: racists, sexists, homophobes, etc, are afraid of something and are trying to protect themselves in some way, harmful though their actions may be objectively.
Everyday Americans have been getting systemically screwed for generations. This isn’t even news. What is news is the sheer scale of it; it is hard to comprehend the magnitude when you begin to understand. For example, it is easy to feel sympathy for Black people in marginalized inner city neighborhoods in the sense of the level of racism from every angle that made the ghetto a thing: from the reason Black people came here to begin with, through institutional racism at banks, and every other place in America, it is easy to understand. It’s virtually everywhere and almost impossible to ignore unless, perhaps, you’re racist yourself and trying extraordinarily hard to convince yourself facts aren’t real.
When you look at the experiences of Minorities, and Women, as a collective whole, things are still fairly easy to understand. It may not be quite as in your face and egregious but it’s still virtually impossible to ignore unless you construct your own alternate reality. This is where those churches, media, politicians, etc., come in. They, using fear-driven anger are actually constructing alternate realities for people who are themselves being screwed, but not by the people they are told to be angry at. I now live in a time and place wherein the alleged ‘leader’ can stand in front of microphones and actually tell his audience to ignore what they are seeing and hearing. That individual is telling his audience to discard objectivity and be comforted by the alternate reality that feeds into the anger, the particular anger that suits the goals of: the political party, the media network, the advertisers, the church coffers, etc.
While fear-driven anger is being rained upon us from pulpits, airwaves, and screens of all sizes, we who are trying to keep everyday Americans all focused on the real problems are being drowned out. Anger is energetic, anger is loud and raucous. Anger can be a self-perpetuating echo-chamber of impressive quality and quantity. Anger does not like competition, often enough. What is the upper limit of anger? Does it have one? I think you cannot exhaust anger, but instead focus and channel it appropriately. You must educate the angry and pull back the curtain of Oz for they have been dividing and conquering us for far too long.
Yes, there are certain parties and groups more guilty than others but no one is clean here. However, why do we fight amongst ourselves for diminishing scraps when we watch them decimate the economy, and the environment, and scoop up it all up for pennies on the dollar (with no real consequences)? Why do we re-litigate the same fights, instead of investing into the human capital of ourselves for ourselves and our progeny? Why do we allow ourselves to be perpetually reactive, instead of seizing our potential to be proactive? These, and more, are where anger is, and should be, a valuable ally. These are problems facing everyday Americans in which we need to be angry.
We need to be angry about the state of voting (suppression, etc), gerrymandering, representation, economic inequality, freedom of information, privacy, human rights (women’s, LGBT, immigrants, children’s, etc), and just the plain ol’ fact we have a level of corruption in the government so astounding we can’t even unpack one catastrophe before we learn of the next. However, even the simple act of establishing a problem in this time and place in which I live will bring out misguided angry responses from those who feel they need to protect ‘their team.’ The alternate reality created by the fear-driven anger has created this new black-and-white paradigm. “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists” said George W. Bush not that long ago. Similarly, an increasingly common thought process postulates Nixon would not have faced consequences if Fox News had been around in his time. Nixon was just at the forefront of what would truly become the fear-driven anger we see now, the manufactured outrage and faux hate.
I see hope on the horizon, as I do with many things. The people from whom I experience the greatest degree or frequency of fear-driven anger, of blind anger, of unresponsive alternate reality anger, tend to be a narrowing demographic of people who represent everyday Americans less and less. I understand part of why fear-driven anger works so well on them is who they are and what they feel they’re trying to protect. The people peddling the anger and fear to them are doing well to convince them equality for us is taking something away from them, being they were the ones who had it all from the start. However, that’s not what equality means here in the real world. Here amongst us angry everyday Americans, hungry for change, we have growing awareness of how our world came to be. We have a growing awareness of what we need to do about it, and how to get there – which includes loving and educating that narrowing demographic preyed upon by the fearmongers. The road often feels impossibly long and littered with people who profit from obstructing progress. However, anger gives us drive and focus. I still have a lot to learn about how to be assertive, and how to be on the constructive side of anger. My country still has a lot to damage to repair, but both myself and my country is emerging from dark periods in time better in the long run with a tool in our arsenal.
~Monk Anchorwind
P.S. – I am many things: passionate, creative, flawed, vulnerable, scarred, patient, hopeful, broken, driven, empathetic, flexible, remorseful, forward-thinking… I am not, however, small-minded. My fault list is deep and many, but I can at least look in the mirror and know I have always pushed myself and those in my surroundings to think deeper, be more accepting, challenge perspectives. The surface answer (what you are presented) is rarely the full answer. This is true in maths, sciences, human nature to include all the things we’ve invented (religion, movies, what you see in the news, et al.,) . Invest in yourself and your fellow man (as in humanity) to feel more, think more, get out of your comfort zone some. We’re all better for it.
We’re just people called people on a planet called dirt. We’re all on the same team, who generally want the same things. We evolved from the same place and are headed in the same direction – as in literally, we orbit the same mundane star in the same galaxy at speeds hard to fathom in an ever expanding universe so impossibly large we will never, ever, learn it all. We, individually and collectively, are capable of a great many things. It’s such a waste we’ve squandered the bulk of our existence already and are on course to continue doing so. Perhaps we’ll actually channel our anger for constructive purposes and right our wrongs. There are more of us then there are of them and the system relies on us. It would be painful, and we want to protect our families and such, but when is enough enough?
Much love.